UPDATE
MARCH 5, 2008
Posted March 28, 2008
Original case: February 25, 2008
Gabriel Huge Córdoba, Notiver
LEGAL ACTION
Federal authorities dropped a charge of “insulting the authorities” against Huge, a photographer for the Veracruz-based daily Notiver, following the photographer’s detention by members of the Mexican Federal Preventive Police (PFP), according to CPJ interviews and reports in the Mexican press.
A crime photographer, Huge was among several local journalists who arrived at the scene of an accident involving a PFP convoy on February 24, according to local press reports. PFP officers told photographers to leave the scene, and when Huge moved to a side street to photograph the accident, he was approached by other PFP members who were wearing masks, the journalist told CPJ. He said the officers the accused him of not obeying their orders, handcuffed him, hit him in the back with a rifle butt, and pushed him into the back of a pickup truck. The photographer was subsequently charged with insulting the authorities.
Huge told CPJ that following a series of conversations with members of Notiver’s board of directors,Veracruz representatives from the office of the Federal Secretary of Public Security, which oversees the PFP, decided to drop the charges against him on March 5. Moreover, the PFP members involved in Huge’s detention will be subject to sanctions, federal authorities told Huge.
The photographer told CPJ that after receiving a public apology from the PFP, he agreed to drop the kidnapping charges he had filed against the federal police.